Everyone knows Bambi, this little fawn with sweet eyes, star of the eponymous film from Disney studios, released in 1942 on the big screens. And how can we forget it? This animated feature film literally traumatized an entire generation, with the heartbreaking death of Bambi’s mother, killed by a hunter. However, the film could have been even more traumatic than that.
Behind this tale lies a dark story almost entirely erased by Hollywood! That of a Viennese Jewish writer, an allegory against anti-Semitism… and an angry Adolf Hitler all red.
Felix Salten, the man behind the fawn
At the risk of surprising you, Bambi is not a Walt Disney invention. The real author behind this tale is a certain Felix Salten (real name Siegmund Salzmann). A Jewish journalist, novelist and figure of the Viennese Golden Age.
Born in 1869 in Budapest, in the powerful Austro-Hungarian Empire, he settled in Vienna, where he wrote a string of works, operas, poetry and even… a pornographic novel (but that’s another story, let’s stay focused). In short, Felix Salten made a name for himself and rubbed shoulders with the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, and the journalist and writer Theodor Herzl, the father of Zionism.
While traveling in the Alps, Felix Salten is overcome with admiration for the beauty of the landscapes, he observes the world, the animals and has an idea: to write the story of a little fawn, nicknamed Bambi (for baby“child” in Italian). In 1923, the novel Bambi, the story of a life in the woods was published and was a great success, selling more than 650,000 copies in the United Kingdom, before conquering the United States. A “Bambi mania” was born.
Although the 1923 book and the 1942 animated film share the same title, the content is far from similar. The barbarism is in fact even more present in the book: behind the bucolic fable, the hero, Bambi, very quickly discovers the cruelty of the world. The hunters not only kill his mother, but pursue all the animals they come across, birds and mammals, without distinction. To survive, the fawn must hide constantly, being wary of everything and everyone. For what? Because other animals betray him, in a never-ending cycle of violence.
Adolf Hitler vs. Bambi
Hate, barbarity, denunciation, massacre: does this remind you of anything? We are clearly dealing with an allegory of anti-Semitism. And this is far from being due to chance. At the moment when Felix Salten imagines Bambiin the 1920s, anti-Semitism rose throughout Europe, particularly in Austria.
The writer is at the forefront: a Viennese of Jewish origin, he sees the hatred spreading around him. An insecurity similar to that experienced by Bambi, chased by the hunter and the threats of the forest. Other details evoke Jewish figures, words close to Yiddish, while many see in Bambi’s father, the great deer king of the forest, a certain… Theodor Herzl. A figure who guides his people to sacred land, far from danger.
The allegory is clear and will not escape… Adolf Hitler. When the latter took power in 1933 in Germany, Felix Salten’s novel took on another dimension: the hunters became the Nazis, the deer being the Jews. And the Führer doesn’t like that, but he really doesn’t.
From 1936, Bambi is placed on the blacklist of works banned by the Nazi regime, which are considered a threat to the German spirit. Written by a Jewish author, the book particularly attracted the wrath of the Nazi fury and all available copies were seized and destroyed. Bambi burns in book burnings.
Disney, a troubled relationship with the Nazis
When Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938, Felix Salten was forced to flee. He took thousands of books and reached Switzerland in 1939. Before leaving, he decided to sell the rights to Bambiwhich Walt Disney will recover, before completely stripping the work of its original meaning.
When Disney Studios released the film in August 1942 in the United States, the political message of Bambi is completely erased. Knowingly? Probably. Walt Disney in fact maintained relationships with many anti-Semitic personalities and his brother even went to Berlin in 1937 to present Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda of the Third Reich. Not the best attendance.
From a violent story telling this world torn by hatred, intended more for adults, the Disney studios have instead made it an ode to nature, beautiful, general public (even if the mother still passes the weapon to the left, sniff).
A parenthesis of sweetness in a period marked by war, certainly, but with an essential message erased: that of a Jewish man, overcome by anguish, watching Europe fall into horror. Felix Salten, deprived of his Austrian nationality by the Nazis, finally died in October 1945, about two years before the film produced by Walt Disney arrived almost everywhere in Europe (in France, Bambi was released on July 17, 1947 in Paris, then on April 28, 1948 in the rest of the country). Without probably having had time to discover the animated adaptation.
